On Tibetan skull-drums
I have played
a two-toned rhythm of rain:
the hourglass of cranium
and stretched human skin
echoing in the enchanted
Cathedral de San Miguel [burned down by the Hopis for being built on their sacred ground
guarding the baked adobe and resurrected like a Phoenix]
streets of Santa Fe
where not far away
the fleas of nomadic prarie dogs
carry the Black Death
though the sagebrush canyons and aroyos
of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains
to the r and r grounds
where the Mexican War troops
of the 1840's came back
down the Camino Real
without flashing a glimpse
of the 7 cities of Cibola
surrounded by memories of the sequoia
paranoia that left them small
on the cliffs of Big Sur, worried
about that long last swim to China.....